This invention relates to fiber flocked articles and more specifically to thin flocked floor mats.
In general, both the consumers and flooring manufacturers are concerned with the negative impact of soiling on the appearance of floors and carpets. Carpet manufacturers take many steps to minimize the detractive appearance of soils on carpets through careful selection of fibers, soil release finishes, and colors to either make soils easy to remove or hide their presence. Consumers also employ means to minimize the effects of soiling on their floors and carpets by frequency vacuuming and sweeping to retrieve soils. Another means for preserving floor appearance is to trap soils before they are transferred via foot traffic onto permanent floors and carpets. Often this is done with the use of floor mats.
Flocked carpets are known in the art. Flocked mats per se are effective for removing dry soils from the bottom of shoes. Wet soils, however, are another problem. The contact time during which absorption of wet soils takes place is often very short. It is desirable that these floor mats have good wet soil absorption rates such that wet soils can be absorbed from the bottom of a person's shoes during this short time. Commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 316,477, filed Oct. 30, 1981, P. J. Sagel, discloses a flocked floor mat with an immobile surfactant on the fibers to improve wet soil absorbency of otherwise hydrophobic flocked fabric. U.S. Ser. No. 316,477 is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Flocking onto rubber with a cement to make a contoured floor mat is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,801,946, Aug. 6, 1957, J. H. Winchester and W. S. Edwards. Flocking onto a breathable polyvinyl chloride film is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,434,858, Mar. 25, 1969, S. C. Dickinson.
Special attention is directed to the references set out in Flocked Materials Technology and Applications," 1972, by E. L. Barden, published by Noyes Data Corporation; AATCC Flock Handbook, R. G. Weyker, Editor, published by the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, 1972; and AATCC Symposium, Flock Technology, Washington, D.C., Dec. 8-9, 1971, published by American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, 1972, P.O. Box 12215, Research Triangle Park, N.C. 27709.